


Juxtaposition

by Emolga



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Canon - Manga, DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED THE MANGA I'M NOT KIDDING, DON'T EVEN READ THE TAGS, Gen, Mourning, Pregnancy, canon character death, oh and Stein/Marie seeing as she's pregnant with his child huehue, ok there's your warning now here's the rest of the tags:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-08 06:27:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emolga/pseuds/Emolga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death and Life sit across from one another. [Kid and Marie friendship/bonding; MASSIVE manga spoilers for the ending.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Juxtaposition

When she enters the chamber, her one good eye settles on the sight of Kid staring into the mirror.  
  
In light of recent incidents, she’s entirely unsurprised by the blank expression of the young man reflecting back at her — grown all too fast and left alone all too soon. The circles beneath his eyes are dark, standing out against the pallor of his skin like shadows, and the gold of his irises has turned listless against his half-lowered eyelids. He’s never one to let himself be seen in a state of disarray, so the rest of him is manicured as thoroughly as ever; only his face is left unguarded, temporarily exposed due to the absence of the symbolic mask he inherited.  
  
He is far too tired for his age.  
  
Soul Perception makes the idea of announcing her presence moot, so she closes the gap between them without speaking. He turns to face her slowly, his Father’s cape billowing behind him, and gives her a smile that shines through his exhaustion, accentuating his misplaced youth in a way that makes her feel oddly nostalgic for the days she spent watching him and his friends play basketball on the courts just outside of school property.  
  
“Miss Marie,” he says, offering her a curt bow out of habitual respect. “It’s good to see you.” The warmth in his voice is unmistakably like his Father’s, and heat begins to rise up behind her eyes before she stubbornly blinks it back.  
“Just ‘Marie’ is fine,” she corrects with a cheerful smile of her own, returning the bow without hesitation. “You’re my boss now, remember?”  
“Of course; my apologies.” The smile turns to an equally-pleasant smirk of amusement at her quip. With the courtesy of his Father before him, he pulls aside the chairs he’d set out in anticipation for her visit and drags one of them to her back, positioning it directly behind her for ease of access. “Please, sit.”  
  
The ache in her back urges her to acquiesce. With a gracious nod she settles atop the plush cushion, shifting until her weight is comfortably situated, and observes as he does the same within his own chair — a simple wooden thing as opposed to the golden and red throne he’s set out for her. (It’s an ornate piece that she recognizes from his childhood; Lord Death always wanted the best for his son, after all, and until now this seat had been reserved solely for him.)  
  
“So,” he begins conversationally, “to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”  
  
For a moment, Marie falters. There are a multitude of reasons behind her requesting his audience — her own curiosity about the progress Shibusen has made with the Witching community, her imminent need to request maternal leave as both a teacher and a Death Scythe, and the Thompson sisters’ understandable concern for his health most of all — but none of them seem like appropriate subjects to breach when he’s looking so thoroughly preoccupied. She’s always been good at smiling away the negatives, though, so she disperses her other concerns with a placement of her hands against her protruding stomach, fingers splaying against the taut material of her maternity dress.  
  
“I’ve started to feel the baby kick,” she tells him. The effect is immediate — he brightens like a sunrise after a long, harsh night, his hands moving to grasp excitedly at his knees.  
“That’s wonderful!” He exclaims animatedly, though his demeanor sobers quickly. “So… The child is healthy, then?”  
  
Marie smiles at the genuine concern tinting his voice and nods to alleviate his worry. Her tryst on the Moon was both spur-of-the-moment and incredibly risky, as she and Franken both knew, but it seems to have paid off in the end.  
  
“Fit as a fiddle,” she announces brightly, her fingers tapping affectionately against the lifting of her belly, “and fond of punching me awake during the wee hours of the morning.”  
“— And the gender?” He scoots forward expectantly, but she has no news to report on the matter, so she greets his question with a shake of her head.  
“We didn’t want to ruin the surprise,” she explains, wistfully averting her eyes downwards to where the points of her shoes press against the pristine floor of the Death Room. “But if it’s a boy… Franken and I were thinking we might name him Joe.”  
  
The air between them suddenly stagnates, and Marie immediately regrets bringing up the name of their fallen comrade in the face of so many other problems. Kid is tenacious, however, and he shakes it off quickly, repairing the momentarily stricken look on his face with a confident smile.  
  
“That sounds like a wonderful idea,” he agrees in a soft tone. “Your child would be lucky to receive the name of such a brave man.”  
“You were lucky in that regard too,” she adds. Though it’s tempting to cringe once she realizes the impact her words may have on him, Kid merely smiles.  
“You’re absolutely right,” he nearly whispers, his voice wavering slightly.  
  
Marie sees unshed tears in his young eyes despite her compromised vision and leans over in her seat, grabbing his tense hands with her own and offering them both a squeeze of consolation.  
  
“Let’s talk for a while,” she suggests warmly.  
  
Judging by the widening of his smile, he’s not opposed in the slightest.

* * *

It’s been over an hour since she first arrived to their meeting, but no incoming calls have reached the mirror at Kid’s back, so she feels disinclined to hurry things along.  
  
There’s a table between them now, accompanied by a tea kettle on either side — for symmetry’s sake, of course. Kid shares anecdotes and chuckles like the child she knew from what feels like ages ago, and Marie guides the conversation along, coaxing out a part of himself that he’s long since buried for the sake of those around him. These unguarded moments must be rare for him, limited only to the sight of his friends and partners; he smiles at her without restraint and tells her everything, from his inability to sleep at night to the adventure he had last weekend when Excalibur dragged him out to the local sushi bar, and she soaks it up like the empathic sponge she was born to be.  
  
Bargaining with witches, running tests on the blood seal which covers the Moon, searching every corner of the world for any traces of Madness his deceased brother had left behind; Kid needs a little bit of normalcy to off-set all of the danger and peril, she realizes, and his determination to get everything done in one fell swoop has left his friends unable to reach out to him as they have in the past. They’re not drifting apart, no — merely growing up and paying closer attention to their own obligations — but she’s more than happy to act in their stead until everything works itself out.  
  
Besides, being five months pregnant has cleared her schedule rather sufficiently, and she’s grateful for the company while Stein is out teaching his class.  
  
She shares things with Kid as well — tells him about her dismay over Crona’s fate, her excitement and nervousness over becoming a mother, her love for the newest batch of students at the academy, and her desire for Stein to finally get off his ass and propose. (She doesn’t want to rush a wedding just because she’s pregnant, she explains, and Kid nods as if he knows exactly what she means.) Ultimately the conversation arrives at the little wavelength within her that swells up more by the day, and she flushes slightly with both pride and embarrassment when he comments on how wonderful she looks as an expectant mother.  
  
“I can’t help but wonder,” Kid begins, “if the child will be a meister or a weapon.”  
“Can’t you sense it with your Soul Perception?” Marie asks, somewhat surprised by his evident lack of inclination. He shakes his head and sips delicately from his cup before continuing.  
“Not yet. The soul is far too new for me to tell.”  
  
A new soul… It’s somehow odd to consider that an expectant woman, the bearer of something fresh like Spring and still developing, is enjoying the company of a Reaper. Death and Life sit across from one another; only at Shibusen could a juxtaposition of this caliber occur.  
  
She ponders the notion for a moment, running her hands across her stomach as she muses — and lifts them suddenly with a soft “oh!” of surprise.  
  
Kid is up from his seat before she has the chance to explain herself, rushing without hesitance to her side.  
  
“What’s wrong? Are you in pain? Should I call someone?” He demands anxiously, expending all of his questions within a single breath. She shakes her head, smiling, and looks up at him with a thrill of excitement.  
“The baby’s moving again!” She exclaims, thrilled by the discovery. His exhalation of relief abruptly terminates when she interrupts him with a proposition — “Why don’t you see if you can feel it?”  
  
A beat passes, and the new Shinigami steps back, suddenly shy.  
“I, uh…” He wrings his hands nervously. “I’m not sure—”  
“Oh, don’t be such a baby!” Without giving him sufficient time to escape, Marie reaches out and unceremoniously grasps both of his hands at the wrist, jerking him forward so his palms come to rest gently against the swell of her stomach. “There. It’s not so bad, is it?”  
  
Any stammering objections he would have liked to voice are silenced when he focuses the entirety of his attention on the sensation of the unborn child’s tiny limbs… And finds nothing. Disappointment washes over his face in a direct contrast to his previous avoidance, his shoulders gradually beginning to slump.  
  
“It must have stopped,” he says with a crestfallen sigh that lingers. There’s something unspoken hanging within his words, though she has a hunch as to what it might be; he fears that the presence of Death may have frightened her child into motionlessness. “I’m sorry. Perhaps I should—”  
  
His breath catches when he feels something flutter beneath his left hand, like the determined beating of a butterfly’s wings.  
  
“— I feel it,” he announces, his eyes widening with each tiny motion. Marie laughs at his look of exaltation and reaches up to rub his back through his Father’s cloak, peering up at him through her one exposed eye.  
“The baby must be excited to meet Mommy and Daddy’s new boss,” she teases, giving Kid a playful tap between the blades of his shoulders. “You know, just the other day Black*Star stood next to me for fifteen whole minutes, holding his fist up to my stomach. He kept asking for a fist-bump and saying, ‘Don’t leave me hanging!’ He was so desperate that I thought he might never leave, but Tsubaki dragged him off after a while.”  
“Well, Black*Star has never been one for giving up on his goals,” Kid offers, withdrawing his hands and returning them somewhat awkwardly to his sides. “Did it work eventually?”  
“Nope.” Marie giggles with a shake of her head. “It seems like the baby only moves for you, Franken, and Spirit.”  
  
The young God’s prideful smirk does not go unnoticed by his golden-haired Death Scythe.

* * *

After twenty more minutes of hearty conversation passes, Marie realizes that Kid is staring off to the side of the room with a familiarly vacant look on his face.  
  
“Lord Death?” She prompts, leaning forward slightly in an attempt to catch his attention. “Are you alright?”  
  
His eyes refocus at the sound of her voice, and he looks up, smiling sheepishly.  
  
“I apologize.” Kid pauses, his fingers drumming once in matching pairs against the tabletop. “… I was thinking of my Father.”  
  
She doesn’t know what to say, so she remains silent.  
  
“When I think of the child you’re about to bring into the world,” he continues, his gaze falling down to the empty teacup between his hands, “it reminds me of the stories Death Scythe told me about my infancy.” The corners of his mouth quirk into a faint smile. “Apparently, when I was a newborn, my Father had a beautiful crib set up in this very room so he could work while he watched over me. Death Scythe said he would rock it back and forth and sing to me as I slept, and if someone tried to enter while I was napping, he would turn them away.” A dry chuckle escaped like a burst of humorless wind through his lips, and tears began welling up in his eyes once more, though he refuses to allow them any purchase. “I was told he loved to show me off to all of his students. Sometimes would bring them in before I fell asleep, and he would say—”  
“‘Isn’t my son the most perfect thing you’ve ever seen?’” Marie finishes the statement for him, much to his surprise; his eyes dart up, fixing on her face, and his mouth falls open in muted shock.  
“I know,” she informs him, her hands gently cradling her stomach once more. “He brought me in when I was first enrolled — more than once, actually. He always knew how much I loved children, so…”  
  
The room goes contemplatively quiet save for their mutual sniffling. Eventually Kid reaches into his pocket and hands his Death Scythe an unused yet crumpled tissue, which she accepts with a grateful smile, utilizing it to dab at her watering eye without smearing her eyeliner.  
  
“I was wondering,” Kid ventures quietly once the sadness in the room is settled, “if you and the Professor still need a crib. My Father’s…” He grips at the edges of the table before resuming his thought. “… The crib from my childhood is still at the Manor, up in the attic. I would be happy to dust it off for you; it won’t be seeing any use otherwise, and Father put far too much work into it back then for it to go to waste now.”  
  
Marie blows her nose into the tissue, considering the idea, and begins to giggle as she thinks of the scenario in a different light: As a teenager she looked on while Death rocked his son to sleep, and now that young boy was Death in his Father’s stead, offering up his former crib up to her own offspring. There’s something contradictory about it, but it’s an honor in the same right, and she realizes with a vibrant grin that she couldn’t be happier about it.  
  
“We would love to use your crib,” she declares once she’s calmed down, dabbing at fresh tears with an untouched corner of the tissue. “Thank you, Lord Death.”  
“… ‘Kid’ is fine,” the Shinigami says with a smile, “seeing as you’ve known me since I was a child.”  
  
 _You’re still a child_ , she wants to say, thinking back on how sad he looked as he gazed into the mirror and searched for pieces of his Father within himself — but she refrains and instead reaches across the table to set five of her fingertips against his knuckles, consoling him the way a mother always should. (So many children in this world who don’t experience any proper parental love, she laments to herself, thinking of poor Crona again; she’s comforted by knowing that her little gift won’t be one of them.)  
  
“I’m glad to be working for you,” she tells him honestly. “You’re going to make your Father proud, Kid. I’m sure you already have.”  
He looks for a moment like he’s tempted to pull away from her grasp, but instead he raises his free hand and sets it gently atop the foreign digits that press lightly on his joints, sealing them flush against his own fingers.  
“I will be there for your child,” he declares through the liquid dancing in his eyes, staring at her seriously despite the obvious swirl of emotion on his face. “My Father’s debt to your kindness and loyalty _will_ be repaid; that, I can promise you.”  
  
She shatters again, this time in slow-motion; her head bows, and she weeps with her one good eye, thinking of the comrades they have lost and the new ones they have gained; she ponders Lord Death in all of his gentleness, thinks of the baby she watched within the crib all of those years ago; and she mourns silently to herself for everything that’s happened, her trapped hand clutching at the slightly-cold skin of the new Death God’s thin, childlike fingers.  
  
If Kid should start to cry as well, she certainly won’t hold it against him. He's just a boy, after all.

* * *

13-year-old Marie Mjölnir steps towards the Death Room, her legs trembling anxiously beneath her.  
  
A meeting with Death is not often something to look forward to, judging by the horror stories which the problem children at the academy have told her. At least her meister has elected to go with her into Hell itself — he’s a tall youth a few years her senior, bearing peculiar striped hair and a pair of squinting eyes that take in more than most people give him credit for. He senses her nervousness with his ‘special ability’ and reaches to grab her shaking hand, consoling her with a squeeze to her fingers as they march beneath the guillotine-embedded archways.  
  
“It’s fine, Marie,” he reassures her with a sincere smile that assuages some of her fear. “Lord Death is a nice man, and I’m sure you’re not in trouble.”  
She swallows down the dry lump in her throat and offers him a grin that, judging by his worried expression, looks more like a pained grimace.  
“I know,” she manages, clutching at her chest with her free hand as if to keep her pounding heart from leaping free from her chest. “It’s just that I’ve never met him in person before, and—”  
  
The ethereal brightness of the path clears, revealing a largely empty room with a single white raised platform and countless black crosses embedded off to the sides. The Man Himself stands at its center, cloaked and masked as always with a large glove tenderly wrapped around the wooden outer-structure of what looks like a child’s crib.  
  
“Hey, hello, whassup,” Lord Death greets in a hushed voice. “So you paired with Joe, Marie? That’s wonderful. The two of you will be unstoppable.”  
Marie looks at Joe for encouragement, then steps forward, her head tilted curiously.  
“Thank you, but why are you whispering?” She asks faintly, mimicking Death’s quietness on instinct. He clucks in amusement beneath his mask and waves them over with his free hand; the pair obliges immediately, dropping their clasped hands in order to pull up on either side of the crib and peer inside of it.  
  
There’s a small child resting on a crimson and black-embroidered sheet, chubby legs kicking as he attempts to lull himself to sleep. His head is unexpectedly covered by jet-black hair considering his young age, three white stripes wrapping halfway around the circumference of his mussed dome, and his skin is so pale that he almost looks ill. He issues a little whimper of frustration as slumber continues to evade him, but Death shushes him, gently rocking the crib from side to side; the baby quiets and stills, subtly shifting with the sway of his bed.  
  
“That’s my son,” Death tells them proudly, his voice barely audible above the rhythmic creak of smooth wood and metal. “Death the Kid. Isn’t he the most perfect thing you’ve ever seen?”  
Joe and Marie exchange startled looks.  
“Your _son?_ ” They ask in unison, struggling to keep their voices down. Death chuckles again and lessens the swinging of the crib as the baby begins to drop off, reaching in to affectionately caress the child’s fat cheek with the tip of his plush glove.  
“He’s beautiful,” Marie says with sincerity once the shock wears off, standing on the tips of her toes to get a better look at the tiny bundle. (Her love for children is practically the stuff of legend among the student body already, and Joe has to consciously refrain from rolling his eyes at his partner’s star-struck expression.)  
“He’ll be taking my place some day,” the cloaked God croons as if speaking to the infant and not to his students, “so I’ve been paying close attention to the enrollment roster here at Shibusen. I suppose you could say I’ve been scouting out the local talent.”  
  
Marie looks up to find that the holes in Death’s mask are focused directly on her and flushes, feeling suddenly self-aware.  
  
“Marie,” he says warmly, setting a soft fingertip against her shoulder. “I expect great things from you.”  
  
She looks again at Joe, who smiles at her encouragingly, then down towards the baby sleeping soundly beside them. It isn’t exactly her dream to become a Death Scythe — she wants “a normal life with a white picket fence and 2.5 children,” as Spirit once put it while he was teasing her — but if growing up strong means that she can protect this little boy, her headmaster’s most prized possession, then perhaps being employed as a professional weapon isn’t the worst fate that could befall her.  
  
Feeling suddenly bolder, Marie gives Death a wide grin and clenches her right fist tightly, holding it up to her heart as if swearing pledge.  
“I won’t let you down, sir,” she vows with enthusiasm. Electricity crackles around her fingers, and she hears satisfaction in the Death God’s voice when he speaks again, his finger still weighing heavy on her shoulder.  
  
“I know you won’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> (wow ok this fic kind of got away from me uh)
> 
> HI. My name is Meghan and I write for fandoms other than FFVII and Ace Attorney. surpriiiiiiise~
> 
> I actually prefer anime-verse to manga-verse when it comes to Soul Eater, but Kid and Marie are my favorite characters in both incarnations of the story, so I decided to write a thing! It stemmed from the thrilled look on Kid's face in this last chapter when he learned that Marie was pregnant and sort of blossomed from there.
> 
> To be honest, I was furious that Kid mourning his father's death was turned into an Excalibur joke. It wasn't the time nor the place for that kind of tomfoolery, so I tried to rectify Kid's inexplicable nonchalance over it within this fanfic.
> 
> (Also Stein/Marie OTP, holy cow.)
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this! I really had fun writing it, for some reason.
> 
> Ah, PS: I'm pretty sure I've forgotten at least half of what was in the older manga chapters, so if there are any anachronisms then please let me know! Also, I know it was never explicitly stated that Joe was Marie's meister at any point, but I thought it was a cool idea, so... Sorry if you disagree or something!


End file.
